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From the "One-Third of a Nation" series, New York City
By Arnold Eagle and David Robbins, 1938

New Deal photographers were instrumental in exposing the human pain of the Great Depression to a wider audience. Their images of rural and urban poverty, which were sometimes manipulated for political and artistic effect, laid bare the economic exploitation of farm workers, uncovered poor living conditions in city tenements, and put a human face on the Depression. Their photographs remain some of the most compelling visual documents of the era.